What They Said About Contact
by coincident
Summary: He's gotten used to Shisui's hands. ItaShi/one-shot.


**A/N**: ITACHI/SHISUI. That is all.

**Disclaimerrific: **This fic's pretentious ending quote brought to you by Pablo Neruda.

Enjoy!

**~X~**

* * *

The thing is—and this is something Itachi would never say to anyone—he's gotten used to Shisui's hands. So it's not that much of a stretch when they end up working into his hair, or sliding the straps of his breastplate off his shoulders, or tracing the flickery shadows of leaves all over his bare chest. It's been a year by now, that's true, but it wasn't that surprising at the beginning, either. Shisui's hands, after all. Not much of a stretch.

It _is _a stretch when one of them finds its way to his side like some sort of mutated stealth-crab, and interlocks with his fingers in a thoroughly natural and thoroughly perfect and thoroughly unsettling way.

"…What are you doing?"

In response, Shisui tightens his fingers a little and gives Itachi a smile that makes him want to simultaneously destroy the world, shove senbon into his own eyes, and squeeze Shisui's hand right back.

"Frigid bastard," says Shisui in a horrendously syrupy voice, and then Itachi thinks it's okay—_Shisui's hand, _he's used to that—and maybe next he just needs to get used to it being Shisui's hand, in his.

**~X~**

In retrospect, nothing would have happened he hadn't first seen Shisui's hands in that strange red glow that comes from bright backlight—palm and fingers clapped over his eyes as a childish tenor snapped, "_Don't look_!" and the flash bomb exploded around them.

And then—hand seals, and "_Katon: Gokakyu no jutsu!" _

And then—a glance tossed over a shoulder, a small fist with a kunai in it, and "I _told _you not to look!"

Uchiha Shisui was two years older than Itachi. He could use fire techniques, throw kunai and shuriken, and—most importantly to a five-year-old—whistle the Fire Country anthem backwards, although Itachi wouldn't learn this last until well after the war. At the time, though, the most important thing was Shisui's hand over his eyes, his voice in the darkness—"Don't look, Itachi, _don't look_"—and the strange sound of his own whimpers, muffled into Shisui's shoulder. There was dirt—had he ever been clean, in the war? He couldn't remember—but Shisui had probably been even dirtier, since that boat-necked shirt had wiped away so much blood and tear-slime and grit from Itachi's face that it probably hadn't retained much of its original cleanliness, if it had ever had any to begin with.

That was when he learned Shisui's hands, although at that time they were still unscarred. Both of them were too young for actual combat, and so they stayed in the underground shelter and waited the days away while the ceiling above them shook and somewhere a woman cried, although they never found out who it was.

When the war ended, they'd been taken home by their silent parents and separated without preamble. Itachi had wanted to go home. He really had, but somehow, the war was there too—although he wouldn't have said it that way until years later, when he realized that the quiet that congealed in the rooms and on the kitchen floor and over the windows was the same quiet of the deserted battlefield, following them back like a mist in the night. The empty rooms were suddenly distant, the white of the curtains the surface of craters on the moon, and home was no longer home.

It was the dread of waking in the middle of the night and floundering in the second between sleep and awareness, lost for a moment in an alien world, yet without the sensation of the waking, so that it was somehow worse—one moment anchored, and the next, adrift.

He was almost relieved when they left the house for the funerals. These were always the same. There was an array of pictures at the front of the room, which Itachi was too short to see, and the cloying scent of incense and candles, and—

"I didn't know you had long hair!"

He didn't recognize the boy at first—details fitted themselves into slots with methodical accuracy; black curls, wide mouth, Uchiha crest pinned to the shoulder of the yukata—and then he saw the outstretched hand, with its dip in a fat palm and little scars and anemone-kinetic fingers, and he knew who it was.

Shisui had smiled at him then, and it was the first time he had seen his face without its wartime colors, sweat, blood, tears, shaded in darkness and glazed over with his own cloudy vision.

"Go ahead and stare! It's okay. I couldn't tell it was you, either. So do you think if I grew my hair out like yours, I could put it in a ponytail too, or—"

He understood then: it would take a while, but home would be home again, somehow.

**~X~**

Shisui's hands are always in motion. They move through the air in leaps and bounds, fish leaping in sparkling water, the dance of autumn leaves as they fall, and Itachi's sure that this is why he was never an ANBU—anyone would recognize those hands in a moment, even sheathed in black gloves.

"So then I said—" and his hands describe circles as if to somehow indicate that he did, in fact, say something. "And then she—" and he points at some imaginary person, perhaps on the other side of the room, perhaps on the other side of the world; it's never really clear. Shisui's always seen these things in his head.

"_Itachi! _Are you even _listening _to me?"

"Yes," says Itachi, because he is. He can't help it. He wants to ask: what did you say? What did she say? What did you do then? Where were you? Were there others there? Was it sunny, was it raining? Tell me, tell me everything.

He'll never say any of this.

Shisui just smiles his slow, flexible smile and curls Itachi's ponytail in his fingers, flipping it over and under the digits, a movement beautiful in its utter uselessness. Itachi just looks at him, and maybe his lips are parted, maybe his eyes are wide, he doesn't know, and it's not important. What is important is that they're caught together—they're tangled in each other like the wild briars that grow on the banks of the Nakano, and all Shisui's doing is giving it visual expression.

"Go ahead and stare," says Shisui, each word a penny in a fountain, spreading its ripples into Itachi's memory. "It's okay. I'm hot, I know."

"Hardly," says Itachi back, and then Shisui laughs and pulls him towards him, and even in the kiss, his hands are moving, weaving their secrets into Itachi's hair. But then, somewhere between removing Itachi's hair tie and tracing his collarbones with his tongue, he reaches for Itachi's fingers and clasps them, _hard_, and then, for just a few moments, his hands stop moving.

**~X~**

Little shinobi or not, nothing cemented a friendship like a lunch box. There must have been shuriken training and class during their academy days, but above any of that was the twenty-three minute lunch period, in which Shisui would take Itachi's dango and Itachi would pretend not to notice, and Shisui would make a large production of giving him his buttermilk sweets.

"Here, I know you like them," Shisui would roar, mostly for the benefit of Inuzuka Hana, who was usually found in the vicinity with various other girls. Itachi, with all the gravity he would later bring to S-class missions, had taken the buttermilk sweets and eaten them quite deliberately, so that the girls would see and Shisui's chest would puff up with pride.

There was really nothing special about buttermilk sweets, but there was something special about Shisui's hand, still sticky with mitarashi sauce, tapping out its rhythms on his shoulder as he muttered his "Thanks, Itachi" and Itachi surrepetitiously dabbed at the saucy fingerprints.

This was what was taught: the memorized rules of reconnaissance and defense, historical charts of the village's organization, the Gokakyu on a pier at night, the strange unwieldy steps of taijutsu katas, the proper way to treat a split knee or a scrape or a broken bone.

This was what he learned: the best swimming spot in Konoha (the freshwater springs, not the Nakano), the correct place to nap between classes and not get caught (the third spike in the Yondaime's hair on the mountain), various bawdy songs that made Mikoto clap her hands over her mouth in horror, and through it all, a silvery laugh, the sound of running footsteps, "Come on, Itachi, _come on_!"

Friendship, apparently, had its rhythms. It had its movements—when to step forward, when to move aside, when to push. This was something Itachi had never really conceptualized, never having had a friend before, but Shisui knew enough for the both of them, and his hands on Itachi's back—"EAT IT! I double-dare you!"—and cupped to Itachi's ear—"I'll tell you a secret…"—and ruffling his hair—"You're not bad, for a little kid!" were more than enough to guide him through it, to teach him the dance he had longed to learn.

He fell, at first, but the steps were natural to human beings—perhaps more natural than that other, stranger kind of love, even—and eventually he was stumbling and then walking and then running alongside Shisui, in an effortless reciprocity, two kites twining around each other as the wind bore them upwards into the brilliant sky.

**~X~**

"Here," says Shisui, and gives Itachi the green dango from his skewer without looking in his direction. Shisui doesn't like them and Itachi does—this is really something they've gotten used to over time, the way they fit together in their protrusions and hollows like puzzle pieces, like spoons…like lovers, although the comparison makes Itachi stop short and drop the dango in the sauce, splattering them both with little droplets.

"_Honestly_," says Shisui, "this is a new shirt," although it's not, it's the same high-collared Uchiha shirt he always wears. Itachi fishes the dango out and takes a bite. They sit in calm silence for a few moments, and Shisui in his restlessness drums out cantos on the stall counter and worries his dango skewer like a senbon.

"So this is nice, right," says Shisui suddenly, in what is already shaping up to be a potentially alarming conversation in just a single phrase. "Sitting here…eating, you know, stuff—"

"Indeed," says Itachi, because he figures he might as well kill time until Shisui decides to get to the point of whatever he's trying to say. He is ANBU; he knows how to stay quiet and let targets present themselves—this is easy.

"It's, you know, awesome!" flails Shisui, nearly upending the tray of sauce. "We should totally do it more often."

"We do this every week."

"Oh, that's—I mean, it's different. Today I'm paying! Don't look so surprised—Hey, hey _Ayame_, I'm paying, okay?"

Ayame, restocking her dessert tray, looks at Itachi in serious consternation, as if for confirmation of this fact. He nods and Shisui begins enthusiastically rooting around for his wallet.

When he steps back outside, ears red—some heavy negotiation must have taken place—it's evening, and the entire world is washed the ridiculous shade of pink that Itachi has never actually seen in nature outside of these Konoha sunsets. The colors bleed out of things as if surrendering to the improbable hue. Last vestiges of afternoon light catch on things like gossamer floss—here on a lamppost, there in a girl's hair—but the twilight is upon the village already, and for the most part, people move through the streets in strange underwater meanderings, as if they have no place to go.

"The truth is," says Shisui by his side, and it's so sudden and quiet that Itachi gives him a surprised glance, "I kinda wanted to tell you something."

"I surmised as much," says Itachi, although he hasn't. Shisui never introduces his statements, he simply says them, tossing them behind him without looking as if fully cognizant of the fact that Itachi will go out of his way to catch them.

"So I—I joined the force," says Shisui, and then Itachi turns around and stops in the street and stares at him, breaking an unspoken rule. Standing across from one another isn't the pose of friends, who are always found side by side; it's something else, something Itachi will have to analyze after the moment is past.

"You joined the police force?"

"Yep. Deputy chief, at your service."

Shisui gives him a sheepish salute, but his eyes are downcast. One of his hands comes up and begings a process of writing noncommittal statements in his hair.

This is not something that can be forgiven easily. They are Uchihas; they know the tension between the ANBU and the police force, and they know that sooner or later, these forces will come into conflict, two suns colliding in a universe too small for the ensuing explosion of fire. Both of them know they've found themselves on either side of a divide, but Itachi feels blindsided by rage and shock and something else—he can't call it _betrayal_ _, _the flavor is all wrong—and now for the first time they're across from each other, and there's nothing in the dance they've learned that tells them what they should do next.

Shisui is saying, "It's not going to change anything—"

"That is why you were apprehensive about telling me?"

Shisui flares, a kicked coal. "If you'd listen to yourself, you'd _know _why I was 'apprehensive about telling you,' because I knew you were going to bite my head off, okay?"

"This is hardly—"

"What the hell is going on in your head, anyway? You think I'm going to go after you as my first mission, or something, because you're our only ANBU?"

This is exactly what Itachi thinks, but this can't be said, so he settles for the same thick slices of silence, dull, intermittent, like spurts of blood from a deep wound.

"I'm not planning on it," says Shisui, hand coming down out of his hair, "unless you're a threat to the peace. Are you?"

He isn't ready for this. He's thought about it, what he will say when the time comes, what alchemy of words he'll use to turn his best friend's eyes away from what is already all too apparent, but the moment has _grown_ instead of _appeared, _and the difference is great enough; Itachi doesn't know if he can weave the deception into what is so much a part of his daily life.

Shisui sees his discomfort and comes forward, cleanly stepping over the divide between them, and therefore, eradicating it.

"Hey," he says, soft voice, soft as his hair and his lips and the down that covers his chest—all these things that Itachi knows so well, better than the components of his own body. "Hey. Stop freaking out. It's really not going to change anything, you know. You're still—"

Of course, there's no word.

And then Shisui seems to decide he doesn't need one, and with the same deliberate touch he's been using for the past few days, he lays one hand against Itachi's cheek, a gesture is so tender that Itachi can't help but close his eyes. His pulse jumps against Shisui's fingers. Around them, the world keeps turning, but they're in a new place, a serene weightless place—and this, too, has been growing organically since that long-ago war and the shelter under the ground, a hand over his eyes, the kaleidoscope of years turning itself over and over again for them to train their eyes on this single vista.

The kiss this time is different, and although Shisui didn't say the word—_you're still…_—Itachi can taste it, as if its saccharine potentiality is caramel trapped inside Shisui's mouth. He savors it, traces its lost letters on Shisui's teeth, learns it all over again in the movements of Shisui's tongue. _You're still—_says Shisui, but he doesn't need to complete the sentence, because Itachi already knows what he's trying to say.

He can't say it himself, but he can say that Shisui's hands are the closest thing to home he knows—then again, that's always been true; it's nothing unusual.

He fists his fingers in Shisui's shirt, and Shisui strokes his hand, fingers, knuckles, the bony knob at his wrist. It's a languid movement, like sloughing off rainwater. Like peeling away a chrysalis. Like brushing away the debris of years.

**~X~**

During the time of the Kyuubi attack, what they said to each other without speaking was _not again_.

It was not a lament or a condemnation, it was a statement of grim determination, and that time, there was no hand over his eyes—Itachi went into battle with the rest of them, Shisui at his side, and one arm flung out in front as if to create a small shield for the two of them. _Not again_, they told each other as the shrapnel fell around them like hail and the fires in the distance rinsed Konoha in a terrible red light. _Not again_, they said, as they dodged toppling buildings and ran and screamed "_Yondaime-sama_!" with the rest of the world. _Not again_, they assured one another, as they stood side by side at the funeral and their eyes, newborn red-rimmed, steady with tears, acquired the red glow that gave them their bloodline and unraveled the rest of the world around them.

They barely saw each other for years after that. Sasuke was born. They were shunted into different genin teams. Itachi entered the trainee force for ANBU (Shisui showed up briefly with a celebratory present—a jury-rigged watch, from the looks of it) —and Shisui delayed his career options, taking A-class missions and laughing in his chuunin vest with men much older than him. Sometimes Itachi saw him through a window as his squad passed, his face lit by candlelight and alcohol, and his dark eyes wide with recognition. But he would leave without stopping, and occasionally he would hear Shisui's unsteady footsteps in the street—"Itachi? _Itachi_, was that you?"—and this too would recede, everything seeming quieter behind the porcelain mask.

Then one day there was a mission in the Grass Country, and the mission report said "This is a joint mission, you may choose a partner—" and then they were on their way, Shisui's laughter catching in the leaves of trees as they followed the road southwards and the sun turned Itachi's vision multicolored. Everything seemed caught, gilded—_beautiful_, in a way it hadn't been for years—and when after a swim Shisui drowsily said "You know, I could do this forever," Itachi didn't know how to tell him that he could too, and that he wanted to know what _this _was, exactly. Then it didn't matter, because Shisui propped himself up on his elbow and kissed him right there on the sun-bleached rock, with their bodies tangled together in an ungainly knot that Itachi never wanted to untangle again.

"You're still a fast learner," was all Shisui had to say about it.

The mission took far longer than it should have. For weeks afterward, there had been irritated mutterings from Itachi's squad—"fucking thirteen-year-olds," "what the hell took so long anyway?"—and Itachi merely blinked these things away.

He learned things on that mission too, things that had to do with skin and teeth and hair and oh, _God_, Shisui's hands—but strangely, the thing that stayed in his mind was that his friendship with Shisui was a favorite book, and you could pick it up after years and the book would fall open in your hands and the sentences and cadences would be the same as when you left off. But sometimes, a phrase unheard sang to you, drew your eyes to its lyrical beauty, and you loved it even deeper and sweeter than you had before.

"It's totally normal. Everyone does it," Shisui had said. "It's not like we're going to go around holding hands, or anything."

They didn't. But pages turned, and their bodies blossomed, and Itachi found that he could get used to Shisui's hands all over again.

**~X~**

When Itachi leaves Shisui on that sunset-dyed street and makes some excuse about going across town, he goes straight to Madara.

The ancient shinobi is reading in the small room he rents on the other side of town, as he always is when Itachi finds him. His mask sits by his side. Itachi can catch a glimpse of his skin, which is somehow dessicated, corpselike, yet still alive with a morbid beauty.

He bows, and says "Madara-sensei."

"You appear flushed," says Madara, tucking a worn strip of cloth into the book and turning to face Itachi. "Are you well?"

Itachi says yes, he's just come from a restaurant with Shisui. Madara has no qualms about their relationship; Itachi thinks things among shinobi two hundred years ago were much the same as they are now.

But tonight, he sweeps the book aside and rises, gestures to the shogi board they have laid out to play as they always do before beginning their training. Itachi sits and reaches his hand out for the first piece, but Madara places his hand over his wrist.

"How is Shisui?" he asks.

Years later, Itachi will put his head in his hands at the thought of this moment. It is the fulcrum of the lever that his life has somehow become, and he wishes he could associate some other memory with it—he wishes he could say that he walked away, or that he felt that sweeping sense of foreboding, or that he wanted to warn Shisui before he ever knew anything was wrong himself. Possible actions come and crowd themselves around Madara's dingy little room, tangling in the cobwebs, huddling in the corners, battering Itachi's nerves as his fingers hover over the shogi piece—and like this, the future is decided, snap-quick, the rap of a gavel, the snap of a neck.

He will wish he had said something else. But what he actually says is, "He is fine," and then somehow irritable, "what do you wish to talk about tonight?"

Madara gives him a cool, assessing gaze. His eyes compartmentalize and weigh what he sees—what is it he wants to see? The nuances of movement in Itachi's muscles? The feather-movements of his hair?—and Itachi could hear ghosts, if he wanted to, in this moment, but he doesn't know what to listen for, and so all he hears is Madara's next sentence.

"Have you heard," he says, "of the Mangekyou sharingan?"

**~X~**

That night, Itachi wears out his sandals crossing town to Shisui's house. He unlocks the window and goes up the stairs and turns left at the second door, motions he's made all his life. He slides the door open and the rice-paper shakes in its frame. He crosses over to Shisui's futon and throws the covers off the form huddled there.

"Itachi?" asks Shisui, halfway waking up, "What—"

And Itachi kisses him, force and friction enough to bruise, but not enough to knock away the tears. But Shisui feels them and pushes him away to look at his face, and then Itachi's head is pillowed in those hands he knows so well; all he can feel is ten fingers, two dipped palms, infinite criss-crossed lines and scars they've gotten together—Shisui's hands. Shisui's hands. He needs to memorize them, because…

Shisui doesn't say anything. He doesn't need to. Ultimately, it's true, what they said about contact—it is an end in itself, and in this case, it will last longer than Shisui himself will, although only one of them knows that.

He never did get used to Shisui's hands.

**~X~**

_and tell me everything, tell chain by chain_

_and link by link, and step by step;_

_sharpen the knives you kept hidden away_

_thrust them into my breast, into my hands_

_like a torrent of sunbursts  
_

_speak through my speech, and through my blood._

_**~X~**_

_end_


End file.
